Ops Cast
Ops Cast, by MarketingOps.com, is a podcast for Marketing Operations Pros by Marketing Ops Pros. Hosted by Michael Hartmann, Mike Rizzo & Naomi Liu
Ops Cast
Marketing Ops isn't Marketing - The Spicy Hot Take
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Can marketing operations truly be considered a part of traditional marketing, or does it stand as its own unique discipline? Join us in this thought-provoking episode of OpsCast as we explore this question from multiple angles, diving into the essential roles and responsibilities that define marketing operations. Hear from Mike Rizzo as he delves into the origins of this contentious debate, intended more to spark conversation than controversy, and listen to Michael Hartmann and Naomi Liu as they share their differing viewpoints on the operational focus and technological intersections of marketing ops.
In this episode, we dissect the distinct roles within marketing operations and sales operations, highlighting the unique skill sets required for each. By drawing on personal experiences and real-world examples from LinkedIn discussions, we unpack the challenges faced by marketing ops professionals and explore the intriguing possibility of career transitions between marketing ops and field marketing. We highlight the importance of early collaboration and proactive communication to improve efficiency and effectiveness within marketing teams, stressing the need for marketing ops to be seen as a strategic, rather than just supportive, function.
Finally, the conversation shifts to the necessity of clear role definitions and effective communication of achievements within marketing operations. We underscore the strategic value that marketing ops brings to go-to-market planning and emphasize the vital role of celebrating successes to ensure recognition from senior leadership. As we look ahead to the upcoming Mops-Apalooza event, we share our excitement about the discussions that will further illuminate the critical role of marketing operations in today's data-driven landscape. Tune in to gain a deeper understanding of the evolving field of marketing operations and why it deserves recognition as a cornerstone of modern marketing strategy.
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Is Marketing Ops Marketing?' Debate
Speaker 1Hello and welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by MarketingOpscom , powered by the Mobepros . I'm your host today , joined by my counterparts , my amigos Naomi , liu , the three amigos the three amigos episode .
Speaker 3We don't need no stinking badges .
Speaker 1Did we get that reference ? No , no , no , no , all right , I'm old , thanks . I'm seeing all these posts on like not LinkedIn social media stuff about movies that came out when I was like in high school and it's like depressing and like awesome at the same time because there were great movies back then , but anyway , so there you go , that's fun , yeah , yeah , like some kind of wonderful . If you haven't seen that movie , go see it . It's great . Probably should .
Speaker 1Yeah , okay , so we are gathered here today because Mike kicked off like this firestorm of like online chatter , including like people getting together to talk about it in like live sessions and things like that , and I you'll have to correct me if I get it wrong , mike , but I think the question was simply is marketing ops marketing right ? I think I think that was the gist of the question . There was a little more context for it and you can provide more . But and I and when I , when I saw it , I was like kind of eye-rolled . Honestly I was . I was like here he goes again , right , just trying to be provocative , like I don't actually get the question . So like , am I about right ? Is that what it was ?
Speaker 3No , I wasn't trying to be provocative . I really don't like to stir up the pot . To be honest with you , I don't like controversy has it been controversial ?
Speaker 1I don't feel like it's been controversial ?
Speaker 3no , it's actually been . It's . It's been nice that people have recognized that the post was not me putting a stake in the ground . It was more just like it was a statement and a someone . Tell me what their thoughts are on this , because I've talked about it a lot with like mark cirkin and a number of others before right when , when we first got the community going , uh , mark was like , do marketing ops people view themselves as marketers ? And I was like I think some do and I think some don't . Uh , and , and that was two years , two plus years ago now Um , and and that statement , uh , that I posted , it was , it was , it was literally a five-word post that has now I don't know if it's gone viral , but it's definitely gone a number of places .
Speaker 1Uh , I'd say that's been like at least in our world , right ? That's pretty viral , right ?
Speaker 3yeah , I think many , many people yeah , there's been a minimum of six that I'm aware of that have , like , put their own thoughts out into the world about it , which is which is great , um , but the post was um , is marketing ops or marketing ops isn't marketing period thoughts , and that was it .
Speaker 2And was that you also stating your stance as well ?
Speaker 3No , no , it wasn't . Um , and it was something that was said out loud . Um , in in a discussion that I was a part of , uh , sometime in the last like three or four , like three or four weeks roughly , and um , and so I , just on a whim , I was like , well , let's see what happens . I did , I could never have imagined that it would turn into what it's turned into now . So , yeah , um , it's been really really interesting to see people's take on that . But I don't know , like hartman , you I rolled , you're like , is that even a question ?
Speaker 1yeah , I mean , I think I like , I seriously , I was like I don't , like I really just like I don't get the point of the question . At the same time , I was like I don't think there's really it's not a binary , there's not a simple answer to that question . It's one of those ones that in my mind , it's the kind of thing . It requires nuance and , yes , I think a lot of the time I think of marketing , ops as being marketing . I think of myself as being more in marketing than in in technology , I guess , for lack of a better term , but um , uh , on the other hand , I also think of myself as an ops and change and like kind of in the in , in the middle of a lot of different things , which is part of why I like those kinds of roles .
Speaker 1But I just didn't like , I was like this is not the kind of question you go yes or no , and and I , and I think it was phrased that way , and so there's a part of me that is both surprised and not surprised about the reaction , cause I think the way it was set up and it's been , I truthfully I haven't really kept up with the , the , the reactions in detail . So if either of you have any insights and I this is where I should have done a little more research on my own , like pulled up some of those posts but like I don't know what , the kind of the if there's a you know one or two or three sort of consistent themes that people are in terms of the way that that gets answered , that are , you know , the majority , or if there's just a lot of different views yeah , yeah , there's been .
Speaker 3There's been a lot , naomi . What are your thoughts ? I think , I think you texted me .
Speaker 2Yes , I texted you right away , actually yeah , naomi , not wanting to put her , you know , put a stake in the ground publicly no , I think she just no , she just likes to like immediately , like go straight to me and just be like exactly , I mean just go straight to the source or I'm like no , I , I , I do not feel that , uh , marketing ops is marketing , because , you know , I feel that we are much more concerned with how marketing gets done than what is being said , and that might be an unpopular opinion or people may resonate with that , and I do feel that it believe that I do feel , or I believe that a lot of it can depend on two things where someone is in their marketing ops career and if they work , have traditionally worked for maybe an organization that has had less resources , so they are doing and wearing multiple hats , and that line between ops and marketing gets blurred right .
Speaker 2So not only are you demand gen , but you're also copywriting or working with the agencies to figure out . You know cadences around marketing and go to market campaigns and what does that look like and the strategy . Then those lines can become blurred .
Defining Marketing Operations Roles
Speaker 2But I think someone had said in the comments on your post , mike , that you know is sales ops , sales , yeah .
Speaker 3I asked that question as a follow up .
Speaker 2Yeah , sales ops is not and I believe I texted that to you too before I went and read a lot of the comments and the folks that I work with in sales ops . You could not convince them to then go and try and sell to a customer Like it's completely different . So why is marketing ops any difference ?
Speaker 3Yeah , those are my two cents .
Speaker 2Yeah , no I love it , canadian sense to Canadian sense . Well , we don't actually have sense anymore because we got rid of the pennies , so it rounds up to five , I guess .
Speaker 3Oh well , those are your , those are your two nickels . Um , no , I , I mean I I've shared this now a couple of times and and follow up , uh , either responses to to folks or or just reposting it again , um , in a different way . I'm not convinced one way or the other and I think I think that is because of the nuance of where the role sits in , in a sort of life cycle of both the practitioner and the company . Um , I think my audience has grown on LinkedIn , so I feel comfortable that I get to see now a broader range of responses from industry verticals and sizes of organizations . People have worked at larger and smaller organizations . I think that wouldn't have been true three , um , three , four or five years ago when I was really I'm just , I come , as a lot of our listeners know , I come from the startup world , so marketing ops is like very much a plan from me .
Speaker 3I'm very much a marketer in in the startup lands . Uh , because you know , yeah , you have to wear lots of hats and you're sort of , uh , you're all playing on a team and trying to figure out how to go to market and come up with campaigns and strategies and all that other stuff . Um , and then I think there's definitely opportunity in upper , larger organizations , uh sort of up market that you start to fall away a little bit from from like marketing quote , unquote from the . You know , as I do my air quotes there from the perspective of what would be considered the traditional definition of marketing . And I and I think I posted about that in a followup comment too right , like the traditional definition of marketing , marketing ops doesn't fit that . Right , and those that mean that the definition of marketing , marketing ops doesn't fit that Right , and it doesn't mean that the definition of marketing shouldn't adapt and change because modern marketing has evolved . You know , to Mark Serkin's point , like modern marketing can't be done pretty much without any form of technology these days and therefore the argument is marketing ops is marketing , it's a core component of it . You just can't go to market anymore and I in fact support that at the same time .
Speaker 3Right , like I wrote a post a couple of weeks back that said if you are an enterprise go-to-market executive and you don't understand just the bare minimum level of the art of the possible with the tools you're using , you shouldn't be in your job . Like it doesn't mean you have to know how to integrate them , run data , object orientation . You don't have to know the ins and outs of exactly how the tool works and functions , but you should know the art of the possible with the tool and the fact that it can integrate with other things and it can get data from other places so you can ask better questions and get the help that you need from the technology . And so I agree right , like to an extent I agree to your point , naomi . No , I don't think sales ops is sales .
Speaker 1Like .
Speaker 3I don't think you can put somebody in a position to go from a sales ops role and just to become a seller . I think you can go the other direction . You could be a seller and have learned some things and been like hey , I actually really like sort of the other parts of this process better . I want to help organize the chaos because I'm living the life Right , but I think if you started more in a technical operations background and you've never got on a discovery call or done a contract or negotiation of any kind , those are very wildly different skill sets . You know a contract or a negotiation of any kind .
Speaker 1Those are very wildly different skill sets in my opinion . Yeah , but I mean I'll disagree with you on the point that I don't think it would be as common . At the same time , I think it is definitely possible , because I'm a big believer that a lot of people can be .
Speaker 1you know , if they have the right environment , the right kind of coaching or teaching or whatever , and then their own desire to learn , they could learn these other skills . It's not all that much different to me than someone who wants to be an individual contributor , moving to a manager role , which requires a completely different set of skill sets to be effective at that , and I truly believe that that is a learnable thing . It doesn't mean it's easy or natural even , but it's doable .
Speaker 3Yeah .
Speaker 1Yeah , so that's my way .
Speaker 3You know that that can be said of pretty much anything . Right , like all things are doable , right , you can learn . You can learn new skills . It might not be the natural path , but you can .
Speaker 1You could do it but you can , you could do it right , yeah , and so what's interesting so interesting to me and like , the timing of when this came out .
Speaker 1So we're recording this right in the middle of august of 2024 , so just for references , like this post came out what a week ago or something that started all up right around that time I recorded an episode for with ali schwinke on one of her podcasts and the genesis of that actually was me kind of riffing with her online about like I get really like I see a lot of people in marketing ops and marketing whining , I guess is the best way to put it right about their peers in other teams . So if you're marketing ops , you're whining about marketing or you're worrying about sales ops and marketers whining about sales , people in sdr like , and it really , it really rubs me the wrong way because I think , yes , there's probably some valid things where it's frustrating , but whining about it , I don't think , solves the problem . And so when you , when you ask that question like the other part that was going through my brain when it was- like I was in the middle of like .
Speaker 1We didn't end up . That's not how the trajectory of the podcast episode went . We kind of went . It was part of it . Right , this idea of like understanding what other people do is an important , valuable skill to understand . If you're in marketing , you don't understand how you actually make money as a company and how your team sell and what the interactions are really like with their prospects and customers . You should learn those things . You should try to do that , and that will make you a better marketer . It will make you a better marketing person . It will just give you a better framework for understanding what is important to do when , and so it feeds into being able to make the trade-off decisions that come inevitably with any role , especially , I think , these ops roles . So like for me , this idea of like adding another thing that is potentially driving a wedge between marketing and marketing ops , like just it . I think that's my my if I'm honest about my reaction like that part is like I'm getting this like . I really don't like that . It's even a question yeah , yeah , no , that's .
Speaker 3That's why I asked for thoughts . It's good , yeah I don't know so . So here's the other thing , like would would you consider this truth ? Marketing ops ? I'm going to try to find the words for it because I don't have it like written down or well thought out . So forgive me , listeners , but I'm asking the two of you would you say that it's a true statement that marketing ops is not well defined and runs the risk of taking on work that they shouldn't take on ?
Speaker 2Yes , I think that traditionally , that has always been a point , a topic of conversation , right . What functions roll up under marketing operations ? I think it's the word marketing that throws a bit of a um . That is the wild card there . Right , and I've kind of I've said this before in in other podcasts and in other sessions that I actually don't like the word marketing and marketing operations , because there's a lot of things that a marketing ops team does that is outside of marketing . A lot of it is around analytics , a lot of it is around data hygiene , data privacy laws . We also support internal processes . You can also do things like employee onboarding , internal it notices , back office stuff work really heavily with sales operations .
Speaker 2I almost think that the word marketing pigeonholes the function and what it should be . I don't know , is it a revenue ops ? Is it a business ops ? Is it , you know , x Y , z it's . I feel like that word gives it a . It influences how people think about the role , right ? So you think marketing , you think demand gen , you think content creation , you think landing pages , forums , emails , events and all of that stuff . Right , we are the underlying support layer .
Speaker 2But you know , I , you know , and before we started recording this . I was thinking like if there was a , for example , if there was someone who worked in marketing ops and a role came up and it was for something like
Navigating Marketing Operations and Field Marketing
Speaker 2you know , field marketer , right ? So you're doing field marketing , you're running events , you're coordinating , you know , open houses for your company , you're coordinating specific outreach , working with agencies to do Google ads , paid ads , all of that stuff Is that something that a traditional marketing ops person would apply for ? And vice versa , somebody who does field marketing ? Would they try to get into marketing ops , maybe , if that's what the direction that they wanted to go ? But if your career trajectory is traditional marketing , there's not a lot of overlap there .
Speaker 1I think it's interesting . You bring a point up that I hadn't thought about by having the word marketing . So field marketing marketing is after field right , exactly . Whereas marketing ops is before , and it almost . I think what you're saying is that , whether intentional or not , it makes it feel like it's subordinate to other parts of marketing as opposed to a , an equal component .
Speaker 2I don't know you have like content marketing , event marketing , field marketing , those are all very clear .
Speaker 1Right Yep .
Speaker 3This is why I asked the question the way that I did it , because as a community I mean you name it Daryl Alfonso , jess Cow , naomi , michael , courtney McCara , sarah McNamara , right , we've all talked about how you need to be seen as strategic , you need to be seen as a critical sort of important sort of lifeblood of a company and all of these things , and we've often articulated in many ways , sometimes very directly , that it needs to have more of a sort of definition . And that was a lot of what started in this community , like a lot of our conversations right at the beginning of this Mo pros journey , and what we've become was around this idea of like , well , what the fuck is marketing us ?
Speaker 1Yeah , I mean it's like one of our best episodes we ever did .
Speaker 3Yeah , right , and it's because people are trying to define the role . Now , at the same time , you've got all the thought leaders Stephen Stouffer , sarah McNamara , everybody else , myself included . We're also , at the same time , saying , well , it is kind of marketing and it's like are you grasping at the desire to want to feel noticed , at the desire to want to feel noticed ? Are you grasping at the desire to want to feel a part of something that's an important factor in an organization ? Like , what is it that's making you think that you want to go against creating better definition and solidifying what marketing ops is and the value to an organization by diluting it , to say that it is just broadly marketing value to an organization by diluting it , to say that it is just broadly marketing .
Speaker 2So I have a thought on that and I feel right it's when you're talking about roles , right ? So I think strategy versus execution , right ? So traditional marketing , field marketing they're often involved in setting things like the strategy , defining target audiences , creating content , knowing what resonates with the customers , right ? Marketing ops , it's more about the execution and I think those of us who have worked in ops for a significant amount of time , at some point you will have a gripe or a complaint about oh , why didn't the team bring us in earlier ? Why did they define ?
Speaker 2this entire campaign and then give it to us to build . Like you know , architects , like the architects , are building these plans but then us , as the builders , we're looking at them like this doesn't make sense , or we can't do this , we don't have the tools to do this , or you know , we're missing this piece of the puzzle and going back to them and saying , hey , like we actually can't do this . And you know , that's one of the things that bothers me a lot , because I never want to say like I will try to find ways to creatively implement something that a business partner or stakeholder wants to do before I will say , yeah , we can't do this .
Speaker 3Right .
Speaker 2And you should have invited us into the conversation earlier and we could have steered the direction in a different path or told you right from the beginning that this isn't going to work Right , and that could be also one of the reasons . It's like we want to be involved but we also don't , if that makes sense . Like we want to be involved in the conversation but we also don't want to be responsible for defining the messaging , for example . Well , this gets back to my .
Speaker 1This is where I was saying like this , this it makes it easier to whine and complain about those other teams when you're not involved with that stuff up front .
Speaker 1You know , and I think that's true , and I and I think this is where your opportunity should be or what you should be doing if you need to find opportunities like that , where you get those requests and they're late and maybe you go through some heroic stuff and you get them close to what they wanted to achieve from a go-to-market activity standpoint or tactic or whatever it is achieve from a go-to-market activity standpoint or tactic or whatever it is and then you have to take that opportunity to go back and say here's what I think if it brought me in at this point , we could have helped you go faster . We could have tried to build something more robust or whatever you want to call it , and I think there's . So , rather than just complaining or whining about it , I would encourage people to take those opportunities , to not point fingers . Right , there's , there's a way to do this that you have to like , learn to do and talk about . Here's how I think we could have done this better if we had worked together .
Speaker 1I mean the other part for me that I see is a challenge for most marketing ops folks is because maybe you brought up things like data quality and efficiency and things like this , like those are things that are they have . They have at least two challenges right they're hard to quantify in terms of their impact and then the secondly , they're not highly visible on a regular basis . Now some of the symptoms of them , like , if you have poor data quality , you get to this point where I'm trying to build a segmentation to target for an audience and I can't do it . It takes me a week to do it because our data is crap . And if we had done the work up front to try to get our data consistent and clean so that we could reliably just like here's our segment , it's done in hours , kind of thing .
Speaker 3There's , there's the work up front piece , and then there's what Naomi was saying , right , right . So tell me what you want to try to be able to target so I can set you up .
Speaker 2I do think it's quantifiable in the sense that you know a lot of the systems that are holding these data is it's not just an open end of free-for-all that you can just store millions and bajillions of records , right ? So there are . You know , a lot of them are based on how many records you have in your system , like Marketo , right , and in terms of quality , if you are emailing to a list and your deliverability rate or your opens or click rate is in the garbage , if you clean up that list and are like , okay , well , we're just going to remove people that are obviously bouncing , look malformed , they haven't opted in or haven't engaged and done anything with us in the last 12 months , Like those , I think those things are already quantifiable . It just really depends on what you're looking at .
Speaker 1So the quantifiable part , I think , is maybe easier . I think the visibility part is harder , because you know the ceo , the cmo , the other c-suite , like other departments sales when an email goes out or an ad gets out or web , the landing page is like that's highly visible , like people know it , they see it . They don't see the stuff behind it that made it happen and then . But is it because ?
Speaker 2you're not telling them .
Speaker 1Right . So if you tell them , so , if you're going through these heroics and getting annoyed and pissed off , that should be your signal that you are part of the problem . You're enabling that ability and you're undermining your own perception of you or your team as being potentially strategic partners . But it also requires you to understand what they're trying to achieve . Right , how does the company make money ? How do we ? How do we ? What helps us win clients or customers ? What doesn't ? Right and understanding , like being able to then provide feedback on data . This is where you should have a strength and that you have access to data .
Speaker 1When we do this kind of email to this kind of audience , it's shit , right .
Speaker 1But when we do it this way which , by the way , is an easier way like , say , go from highly designed to text-based right , with a sense from just an example that has been true for me everywhere I've been for the last 10 , 15 years right , do , simple , text-based email and it tends to perform better in like all measurable things , text-based email , and it tends to perform better in like all measurable things , right , right and like .
Speaker 1That's the kind of input you can provide because , by the way , doing that is way easier than building out a highly designed email and I get like branding is important and like so there's a , there's a balance , and that's my point , like it's not a simple a or b , it's there's nuance and that , and I think you need to like try to build that ability to discern what is there doing , what's going to be most impactful for this particular business , and how can I provide value back to the organization to help steer the strategy to the point where I eventually get pulled in earlier and earn the right to that . Like . Just assuming you should have the right to do that is , I think , setting yourself up for just being frustrated a lot .
Speaker 3Yeah , yeah , and so off my soapbox now .
Speaker 3No , it's great , this is all great . Um , so I think you know , just just kind of going back into this idea of like what ? What are we grasping at Right ? I'm not . I'm not saying that we're grasping at air , grasping at straws or anything like that . I think there are important things that Steven and Sarah and these other folks are saying that it is marketing , that it's a part of marketing , that it should be seen as strategic and all this other stuff . I totally agree with all of those sentiments . But I think there's the definition of your roles and responsibilities need to be clear enough that
Marketing Ops Role Definition and Communication
Speaker 3an organization at the top board , executive and everybody else can understand your strategic value to the process of go to market . And I think it's perfectly okay for you to be involved in a conversation at an earlier part of the planning phase , not to be seen as the strategist who's going to come up with the plan , but to be seen as an advisor to say here , let me show you what we have in terms of the art of the possible . I want to hear from you what it is that you're trying to do , because I can either enable it or find the way to enable that with things that we don't have in place today . But you have to . I don't think have to is a strong word . I think we are .
Speaker 3I'll just speak from my own experience . Actually , I found it a bit stressful to be speaking up about potential impacts to the organization's go-to-market plan , because my job wasn't to be the go-to-market strategist at Mavenlink , for example . I wasn't the person coming up with demand gen campaigns . That was not my responsibility . Sure , I had ideas that I could have offered up . And my boss at the time said you have ideas , you should speak up . Right , you should speak up more . And it's this interesting balance that we have visibility into this whole funnel , right , we sort of have an idea of what's working and what's not .
Speaker 3And when I said earlier , you don't need the extra work , right ? Sometimes you don't want to raise your hand and say , oh , I have this idea for a go-to-market whatever , whatever , right , like you don't necessarily want to do that , because you're like , I have a backlog the size of Texas . You know , I don't want to become the person that now needs to lead the charge on strategy , right , but I do want to be the person that can help enable us to go faster , support the vision and build the ecosystem for you to get visibility into what's working and what's not . Do I have to make a decision myself on what's working or what's not ? I can give you my opinion .
Speaker 3I've laid out the foundation for you to collect the data and analyze it . I can analyze it , too , with you , but as a strategist for those that keep touting that we are marketing and we should be seen as strategic and all this other stuff I think it's one coin and you're one side of that coin and you have to be sort of careful about . Well , how far away from what we're all fighting hard to figure out , which is the definition of marketing operations , how far away from that do you want to get to becoming this other type of role ? Right , and that's why I asked the question , because at the end of the day , it's about protecting the role so that it doesn't get lost in the mix of well , can't Jane do what Mike does ?
Speaker 3Yeah , I mean , they're all marketing right .
Speaker 1So you're getting to something where , like , I just steamrolled right over Naomi , uh where she made a point , uh , as I was on my rant about also making sure that we talk about what we do . So I think that's an important thing and , naomi , I think you do a good job of that . I always am impressed at how you do that .
Speaker 2Yeah , I mean , I often will get comments from folks who are looking for a little bit of mentorship around . How do they communicate their achievements to senior leadership or those who are really making the decisions and having visibility ? And you know a lot of the complaints are around . Hey , you know , my boss , or my boss's boss , or the company , doesn't really know what I do and it's frustrating and I'm unable to vocalize all of the achievements that we've done without , you know , eyes glassing over or whatnot , and just like data , stuff is just not a sexy topic to talk about . They just assume that things were et cetera , et cetera , et cetera , Right , and part of it .
Speaker 2And I want to go back to . I want to go back to something that I said earlier , which is , you know , if you've worked in marketing ops for any amount of time , you know there might have been thoughts that come through your mind that are like , well , I can't read their mind Right , and you could be speaking of people that you are , you know , collaborating with your business partners , your stakeholders . We can't read minds Right . The assumption is that we can , but we cannot , and the same goes for the people that need to have that visibility they can't read our minds . So if there's something like , wow , I just used I don't know Ringlead to merge 20,000 duplicate contacts and now I've cleaned up our database and now we are , you know , 15% below our allocated contract maximum , as opposed to almost hitting the max , those types of things should be communicated , and it doesn't have to be this formal presentation . It never has to be .
Speaker 2I just am a huge believer of say it when it happens . If you have a success , however small it may be , there's no issue to communicate that out , Whether it be a quick one-liner email , a Slack message , a Teams message , or if you want to send it to a wider audience . I'm always and you want it to be quick create a chatter group on Salesforce , right , If you're a Salesforce user , and just blast it in there , right . I do not feel that people in marketing ops and it could just be , I don't know what it is Like I I've
Internal Communication and Value Recognition
Speaker 2been guilty of it too Earlier in my career is like we don't want to celebrate these successes and then later on down the line we then say well , nobody knows what we do . Well , we didn't also tell anybody .
Speaker 1Well , and I think it's , it's interesting . Um , cause we don't ? I think you're right Cause we don't celebrate our success ? Successes because there's this thread . I've already used the term heroics .
Speaker 2Right , I think we enjoy being the hero and getting something over the line and enabling it , but not , and it didn't , and just assuming people will recognize that it was heroics , not just the normal like this is what , how it should work every time I feel like I almost feel like the better something works , the harder it is to get that recognition , because we live in a system where we expect it to work , we expect it to function the way it's supposed to function and we don't pay attention to it unless something's wrong .
Speaker 1Yeah , I'm with you , especially as a leader , I try to share even small wins , like things that my team would do right . Look at this , and this is what it but it's . I tried to do it in as much as I could in a context that would resonate with the audience . I was sending it to right . This was the impact that's going to help or impact your team or your group's ability . Just one little thing you said that , like all this data stuff is not sexy . I said I was pitching the idea that we needed to allocate some team resources towards data cleansing . On a thing I said until I told my boss at the time I was like this is not sexy stuff , but it's like it's gonna pay dividends down the road . She's like no , it's sexy stuff . I was like yes , yes I think it's just .
Speaker 2I'm just saying , like the audience , not right , yeah , but I like so my is like I .
Speaker 1So I think this is the other part right . I think we make . You were kind of hinting at this , naomi . I think we make assumptions about , well , that we can't read their minds , but it's like also assuming that they may or may not believe that I didn't think she would believe that it was sexy or useful , but she did . Would believe that it was sexy or useful , but she did . And so I thought I had a much bigger challenge ahead of me , trying to convince that this is how we should allocate resources and like , just like , just going out there and just putting it out there . It invalidated my assumption , which was , in this case , was a good thing , yeah , right . So I think that's the other thing is like be willing to , to talk about what you do or what your ideas are , and you may get shot down . It doesn't mean you're going to get everything you want . I mean that's unlikely for just about anybody , but you don't get a chance if you don't try .
Speaker 3Yeah , yeah , I agree , I think I think what's ? I think what's fun about , you know and the word opportunity came up in this discussion earlier like this , this discussion has brought up a lot of opportunity , and I think our opportunity is to go , uh , use the sort of unique skills that we all seem to have in this marketing operations role to do exactly what the two of you are talking about right Communicate , share the art of the possible in a way that doesn't say you want to necessarily own the strategy , but really just say , hey , I want everybody to see what I can see , because I know I've had multiple firsthand experiences where I've been working with a VP of communications who has a couple of ideas and I was like , oh , yeah , we could do this . And they went , whoa , really , I had no idea , right , if literally all we did was like act as I don't know , our own little AEs internally for the products that we have , just to say , hey , I'm going to demo what our tools can do , someone else , come up with some ideas . Let me show you what the art of the possible looks like within our stack today and if you've got questions about whether or not we can do something after this . I'll tell you if it's doable now or if we need to build in some other infrastructure to be able to do something different . Right , whether that's collecting new data or hitting a new market , or whatever . It is right .
Speaker 3But it's like I think your opportunity in the role of the marketing department , uh , and , and really the rest of the organization on Coda market , is to say I want to show all of the organization the art of the possible and try to bring you as far along into my world as I can so that you know as much of the limitations that we're up against as possible without having to be an expert . Right , and ? And and I think I think that that's a really , really unique opportunity for us to to seize in this idea of , like , defining the role of marketing operations and trying to protect it a little bit so that it doesn't get handed a bunch of stuff and suddenly you're not like accidentally stepping into a totally new world of of roles and responsibilities that perhaps you didn't intend to go into , and then it creates clarity for the rest of the organization on . I need that type of person by my side , cause I can't possibly know every single thing that we have at our fingertips to go to market . I want them right next to me . Whether that's a CMO or a VP or director of demand gen , it doesn't matter , right ? I think ? I think that's a beautiful like relationship and synergy that you can have in partnership with your marketing organization . Does that make you a marketer ? Marketing organization Does that make you a marketer ?
Speaker 3Maybe , but I think marketing operations needs to continue to fight for what its value is , and a lot of that to your point , both of you is about communication and then definition as well . Right , I just don't want it to get lost in the throes of yeah , that's just marketing . Yeah , so I don't know , I have a lot more that I want to say on it , but I'm sort of like holding cause . We're going to do a session next week in an open forum . I hope the two of you can join . Uh , this episode will probably go live a couple
Strategic Role of Marketing Operations
Speaker 3of days before that actually happens . Um , and then at Mopsapalooza , I'll probably share a bit more as I round out my thoughts from the rest of the community , you know , on sort of absorbing what I'm hearing from everybody and saying like , hey , like this is kind of what I , what I think and what , what maybe we all could get behind . So I'll share more about that .
Speaker 1I'm thinking like celebrity deathmatch at Mopsapalooza .
Speaker 3Yeah , I think we will do a debate . I think we're probably going to bring in Amber Selins , stephen Stouffer , find a couple more . We might just put a couple of folks on stage and just do a discussion about it . So it should be fun , but I don't know . I'm excited for what's been happening in this conversation so far and I think getting a chance to just sit down with the two of you and talk about it is like again opened up , you know , more , more opportunity for us to try to figure out the way forward . You know , hartman , you started with I rolled my eyes and now you're like well , okay , I kind of see what you're saying , you know . So it's good , right , nice , maybe . Maybe you're still thinking I'm rolling my eyes .
Speaker 2I want someone in sales ops to ask is sales ops sales and should they get ?
Speaker 1commissioned . Yeah , yeah , that would be an interesting one .
Speaker 3Someone will do it .
Speaker 1Sales leaders would be like F .
Speaker 3no , you didn't help me Close that deal . You know how hard I've worked .
Speaker 1You called me out that my pipeline was bullshit , right .
Speaker 3Instead , you saw that I was sandbagging it . I was keeping a couple of deals to myself and then , last minute , yeah , anyway , interesting stuff .
Speaker 1I think you're right . Yes , I did . You did have an eye roll moment , for sure . At the same time , I do think it's been interesting that it's taken off like it has and that it's spawning these other conversations . So I think it's a good thing , said like speak up , talk about things you're doing and why it matters in the context of the , the business and , uh , helping to , to try to get people to bridge across these teams , to to , to be able to share the art of the possible and , you know , learn from each other and understand how your business works . I think that would be a win , right ? Whether or not that helps define what is marketing ops . That could be a byproduct . To me , it doesn't have to be .
Speaker 3Yeah , yeah . I think what's exciting about all of this for me , as we kind of round out this episode , is I think it's giving me a little bit more clarity on what it could mean to be a certified marketing operations professional , because a lot of the inputs from people , uh , are pointing to very clear signals about what matters in this role . And then , um , and then beyond that , the thing that I've been saying , probably on repeat lately , definitely for at least the last year , is um , there , I don't believe today there is anybody that is trusted to build the go-to-market tech stack of the future . Right , like I don't . I don't think it's a CTO and I don't think it's a CIO . Like if , if a CEO was like trying to figure out how to build the tech stack that I need to be able to bring products and services to market . It's this mishmash of , well , I've got salespeople all buying tools and marketing people buying tools and all this stuff .
Speaker 3And as we move into this world of a data-first , data first , data warehouse sort of centric model , which we're starting to see more of like , whose responsibility is it to be ? That chief marketing architect , that chief martech right architect person ? I think marketing operations is is absolutely the best suited to be able to slide in and be seen as that strategic architect for how you go to market with modern marketing tools and sales tools and all that stuff . And so a lot of this for me is about like , don't get it lost in just the mix of marketing . Don't get it lost in just the mix of marketing . Start realizing how critical these types of people are to an organization , because if it's just in the middle of marketing , we will continue to see the rounds of layoffs and then suddenly organizations go , oh shit , I don't know how any of this stuff works . And now we've got to start over and blow it all up , right ? So that's , that's kind of where I think I'll leave it for now .
Speaker 1Yeah , I think , yeah , this has been an interesting conversation . It didn't go , I think , the way I even expected this conversation to go , so , but not a bad thing , it's like , but it's , um , I always learn a little bit something talking to you too , so thank you , it's fun . Yeah , it's fun . All right , are we done ? Are we done with this topic for for now , at least for today , until next week , and then ?
Speaker 3tomorrow , cause you know Tao and uptempo and uh whatever , the huddle is hosting a session , so I'll be on that . Yeah , I probably won't speak very much on it , I'll be honest , because I just want everybody else to speak .
Speaker 1Yeah , so by the time this gets out there , it will have been like last week or something .
Speaker 3Yeah .
Speaker 1Or so , so it wouldn't matter anyway . Well good , well , always fun when we get together . As I said , I always enjoy that . It's kind of how this all started , so it's like old times Anyway . So thank you for bringing that idea and putting it out there for the community , mike . Thanks , naomi , for all your insights . I always learn from you . That's great . Thanks to the community and to all of our listeners who are out there , naomi , mike or me , through LinkedIn or through the marketingopscom Slack or email , if you have it . Until next time , we'll talk to you later . Bye , bye , everybody , bye everyone .